As the U.S. solar PV sector prepares for significant investments into new manufacturing and materials supply facilities in the coming years, the question of technology-leadership for silicon-based production will be closely monitored.
Which companies will build new solar cell manufacturing capacity that is grounded in process flow ownership and R&D activities? Which companies will default to turn-key lines from third-party vendors? Moreover, what will be the role of PV equipment suppliers in enabling the U.S. to have technology leadership in the PV industry?
This article explains why the investments being made into new cell capacity in the United States today will not simply create the technology mix of modules procured domestically over the next five years – but will likely identify the companies that will be best placed to drive technology change, while being able to deal with any potential restrictions on production equipment or raw materials being exported from China.
These themes are pivotal to the forthcoming Solar Manufacturing USA 2026 event in Austin, Texas on 22-23 September 2026 – the first ever sector gathering, dedicated to a domestic U.S. specific PV manufacturing ecosystem. And the first event to put global solar cell manufacturing trends centre stage at a premium U.S. based gathering of industry leaders.
Before looking at how the United States is going to build out a meaningful cell manufacturing sector, let’s have a look at what’s been happening globally in cell manufacturing in the past five years – a period that has been dominated by Chinese companies.
Ever since solar cell manufacturing in Taiwan capitulated in 2018, China has ‘owned’ silicon based solar cell production.
Even the leading company outside China sustaining an in-house cell manufacturing activity of note – Hanwha Group (through the original acquisition of Q-Cells AG, and subsequent branded offerings Hanwha SolarOne, Hanwha Q.CELLS, Hanwha Q CELLS and Qcells – has failed to keep up with the Chinese solar cell leaders. In 2025, Hanwha Solutions’ Qcells operations was ranked outside the top 20 companies in terms of cell production volumes, 17 years after the original Q-Cells AG held the number one spot globally.
Since the start of this decade (the six-year period from 2020 to the end of 2025), Tongwei has been the global leader in solar cell production, holding number one status every year and producing more than 100 GW of solar cells alone in 2025.
Tongwei and Jinko Solar combined have produced about one-quarter of all silicon solar cells produced in this period. Adding JA Solar, Trina Solar and LONGi – these five companies have made about one-half of the total volume.
Collectively, Chinese companies produced 97% of all c-Si cell production between 2020 and 2025, with the output of all Indian companies about 1%. Qcells’ contribution (within the Rest-of-the-World grouping) is also close to the 1% level.
Tongwei has been the leading c-Si cell producer every year since 2020. Five companies have provided about half of all silicon-based solar cells made in the 6-year period 2020 to 2025.
Historically, the solar industry has somewhat obsessed with module shipment volumes. Even the analysis above, on actual cell production volumes by company, is rarely covered in detail. In fact, the pie-chart above is probably the first time this type of analysis has been shown.
However, achieving high-volume and low-cost c-Si cell production is not simply about economy-of-scale. It also requires the cell manufacturers having close working relationships with the cell equipment providers and the raw materials suppliers (specifically metallization paste).
As cell production ramps up in the United States during 2027, equipment supply has been spread across turn-key line suppliers from China, European tool supply-chains and other approaches (using for example repurposed lines from China or equipment made ‘in-house’ based on blueprints supplied by Chinese companies).
For any new entrants to cell manufacturing (as seen today in the United States and India), initial ramp-up (at the 1-2 GW level) can often be done by acquiring turn-key lines. But what about moving to 10 GW or 20 GW, or even 100 GW?
To understand how best to scale cell manufacturing beyond initial turn-key approaches, the lessons from China over the past decade should be recognized; perhaps best characterized by Jinko Solar’s integrated 56 GW ingot-to-module manufacturing base in Shanxi, China – the current gold-standard in creating a vertically-integrated manufacturing and raw material supply ecosystem.
Adding a first GW of cell production equipment may often be best outsourced to the tool supplier. But having 20-GW-plus cell capacity should be an in-house owned activity to acquire technology differentiation, take ownership of materials supply-chains and wrest IP and know-how ownership.
Speculation has been rife in the mainstream media outlets regarding Tesla’s equipment supply-chain strategy for its 100 GW plans. But surely any company planning cell capacity at this level would start cautiously (for example the first few GWs of cell tooling from turn-key sources) and then own and build-out the rest of the 90-GW-plus capacity through owning the cell manufacturing process and having direct contractual and working relationships with the key suppliers of deposition equipment, wet chemistry, printing/firing and automation. Essentially, using the turn-key suppliers purely to get moving, not being overly dependent on any third-party entity for something as essential as high-volume cell production operations.
Deciding on which cell technology (PERC, TOPCon, HJT or back-contact) and associated turn-key or stand-alone tool suppliers will form the basis of cell production growth in 2027 may be unclear today: but the materials supply side is easier to understand.
Excluding wafer sourcing, solar cell fabrication (for any of the technology variants) requires gases and chemicals during the production process and screen plates (consumables). However, the production costs (and cell performance levels) are dominated by metallization paste.
If only the early proponents of cell paste supply to the solar industry could have seen what was going to happen from 2025 onwards?
Silver paste supply to the solar industry is now (almost entirely) owned by a select group of Chinese companies, all with production bases in China. But until 2020, this was far from the case.
While Japan had several early suppliers of silver powder and paste that evolved with the initial wave of solar cell production in Japan during the 1990s, DuPont and Heraeus were the leading proponents until about 2018, with Samsung SDI and Giga Solar (Taiwan) playing a meaningful role also leading up to 2020.
Companies that were largely established in the early days of Western solar advocacy, DuPont and Heraeus have both fully exited the cell metallization space in the past few years; not simply shutting down in-house operations but selling the associated patents, IP, know-how and product brand names.
The actions of DuPont and Heraeus – in essentially handing over years of Western knowledge accumulation to Chinese-owed entities – was one of the most surprising developments in the solar raw materials supply-chain reorganization that occurred between 2015 and 2025. Would DuPont and Heraeus have made these decisions in the cell manufacturing investment climate of today, strongly favouring the development of domestic cell manufacturing sectors in the United States and India – precisely the landscape that each of the companies would have thrived within.
The manner of exit (through offloading years of accumulated knowledge) was all the more surprising, given that silver paste revenues from the solar industry for Heraeus accounted for single-digit percentages of the company’s operating turnover in 2023-2024; for DuPont, solar cell revenues were firmly in the noise.
Indeed, in the case of Heraeus, the impact was probably felt most at Qcells – a company that had previously relied on Heraeus for about half its silver paste supply volumes.
Today, metallization paste supply to solar cell manufacturing is dominated by two Chinese companies (with all manufacturing bases in China), DKEM and Fusion, representing about two-thirds of the market, with other Chinese companies accounting for almost all other supply.
Consequently, if Beijing wanted to stop solar cell production in India and the United States coming to fruition, would restrictions on silver paste exports not be more effective than limiting production equipment (where China does not have a monopoly)?
This is no shortage of talk in the market today about paste producers in China seeking to ‘access’ the U.S. market through Southeast Asian ‘halfway houses’, directly owned or via third-party OEM or contract arrangements
But ultimately, there must be more at stake here for the U.S. solar cell community than waiting for a few Chinese paste suppliers to hastily construct non-China shipment bases from a compliance standpoint?
Remember – metallization paste is the key raw material for solar cell production, the most important stage of the c-Si value-chain.
Therefore, ramping solar cell production in the United States today is probably one of the biggest opportunities for reshaping how metallization is done in the first place. Copper not silver? A significantly faster roadmap to remove silver altogether? New printing equipment tooling? But fundamentally a move to new supply channels and solutions.
These will be among the questions and topics that will be discussed on stage at Solar Manufacturing USA 2026. Ultimately, understanding this may offer a glimpse into which of the current cell expansion proponents in the United States are investing to own their own technology roadmap, potentially being the catalysts for solar manufacturing change on the global stage going forward.
To get involved in the inaugural Solar Manufacturing USA 2026 event in Austin, Texas on 22-23 September 2026, or to register to attend, follow the links on the event portal here.
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